Taiwan’s Military Chief Among the Eight Dead as Helicopter Makes Forced Landing

Taiwan’s senior military official was one of eight dead on Thursday after the helicopter carrying them made a forced landing in a mountainous area near the capital, Taipei, the defense ministry said.

The majority of the helicopter was in a northern forest covered in fog, its blades shattered into pieces, while dozens of rescuers comb the wreck for survivors, showing photos released by emergency services.

The chief of staff, Air Force General Shen Yi-ming, died during the incident, while five of the 13 people on board survived, the army said in a statement. “Eight of our colleagues were killed,” a military spokesperson told a press conference that was broadcast live on television.

The defense ministry said it had sent a rescue team after the forced landing of the Black Hawk helicopter in New Taipei City after the aviation authorities lost contact with the vessel at 8:22 am. The helicopter had left Taipei on a mission to visit soldiers in the northeastern province of Yilan for the Lunar New Year at the end of the month.

The incident comes a week before Democratic Taiwan holds presidential and parliamentary elections on January 11.
President Tsai Ing-wen, who is looking for re-election, canceled all campaign activities until Saturday and urged the authorities to make every effort to save. She is scheduled to give a speech at 3 p.m.

The United States, which has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but is the strongest international donor and most important arms supplier, sold the island 60 UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters in 2010. It was not immediately clear whether the helicopter during the incident from Thursday there was one of them however.

The incident was the last in a series of aviation accidents in Taiwan, after the crash of a Black Hawk helicopter off the east coast in 2018 killed six people on board and the crash of an F-16 fighter jet killed a pilot in the same year.
In 2016, the Navy wrongly shot a supersonic rocket and hit a fishing boat in waters that separate Taiwan from diplomatic rival China.

China, which claims that Taiwan as its territory is being brought under Beijing’s supervision if necessary by force, regularly calls the island the most sensitive issue in its ties with the United States. Taiwan says it is an independent country called the Republic of China, the official name.

Source: Technoe

Image Courtesy: DW